Music Box Superheroes
by sunna
Summary: Max and Logan make some mistakes. Kinda angsty. Okay, very angsty. :) Enjoy!


Title: Music Box Superheroes (revised)

Feedback: Yes please!!!Email bm337@scn.org or jennymac@multnomah.edu

Summary:Max and Logan make some mistakes.This is in response to a challenge by Anna.She calls it the rear window challenge.I don't remember where I found the challenge, hee hee.But if someone wants to see it, I have a copy.

Disclaimer: Not mine.

Sorry, this was not beta'd, so let me know what you think I should change.

You'd like to think I have it easy

At times I think you're right

But then I take a look around and see

The grass is always greener on the other side

And I can never be the one who saves the day

I'm just the man in the music box

It's nothing special

I'm just the man in the music box

(your music box superhero)

I will never be your superhero.

--from "Music Box Superhero" by the Juliana Theory

Too late.Too late.Too late.

Too Late wakes me up at two in the morning to tell me, You could have done more.You could have acted faster.Your stupid pride kept you from calling sector police instead of trying to play superhero.

Too Late says, You were selfish too.You kept her back.

Max says, Logan, don't be a fool.You can't save the world.We tried.She's trying to inject some reality into our lives at two in the morning.

I'm boiling milk for hot chocolate.

But I see in her eyes that Too Late follows her around too, up the Space Needle, down the Space Needle, to Jam Pony, to her flat, to my apartment.That's why she's here.Because shared mistakes bond people.

She paces, full of restless energy.I envy her.If I could pace, or something.But I'm powerless.

Just like I was powerless on the rooftop.

We lock eyes, and I know we're remembering the same moment.

_Watching.I'm watching and Max is watching.I imagine that her genetically enhanced eyes are hyperdilated, searching for-what?We don't know what it looks like.Bombs can look like shoe boxes, tennis balls, anything.Or maybe there is no bomb.Maybe this is a set up, maybe someone got to Shrimpy.(What a name.What mother names her child Shrimpy?)Shrimpy says, look there's a bomb, but you can't call the cops, they're the ones that put it there._

_ _

_And I believe him._

_ _

_But what if this is a set up?It all seems too weird.There hasn't been any activity for hours._

_ _

_Max changes position to get a better angle. "This better be for real," she growls._

_ _

_I envy her.She's wound, ready to spring.She_ walks _around me.(I can't even move my big toe.)_

_ _

_But we don't know what we'll do when we find it._

_ _

_"There-" she points it out at the corner of a building inhabited by squatters. A big barrel.There must be more that she sees."I'll be right back,"_

_ _

_"What?"_

_ _

_"So now we find it and then we just watch it explode?Yeah right!"She holds up a pair of wire cutters, grins the way she does when she has just said something extremely witty._

_ _

_"Then-- I'll call."Since I'm trapped in this broken body, unable to do anything.But I'll call the people inside, warn them to get out, pray that Max doesn't set it off and blow herself to smithereens._

_ _

_She takes two steps forward to jump down and I lift my cell phone when-_

_ _

The milk is burning.Max snatches the pot off of the stove and throws it into the sink, dousing it with water.Smoke clouds by my ceiling, the way it crowed out of the side of the building.

_Sirens, smoke, flame.Terror cries._

_She's almost ready to jump down to that building anyhow.I can see her weighing the risks and she's almost ready to jump down._

_ _

_I know that I can sway her at this instant.But once she's made up her mind, she'll go, never mind what I say.So I reach my hand out and say, "No.Max, it's too dangerous.If something happens and you get taken in--there's really not much you can do now."_

_ _

_I mean that it's too dangerous because of Lydecker, not because of smoke and flame.Because it really is too late now.Because as soon as the sector police arrived (and they would definitely be arriving now), there would be questions and detainment, and they knew her face now—and what if this was a set up?_

We should have called sooner, she says.

But I say, We couldn't call every building on the block, and rub my eyes behind my glasses.I have to look away; I can't look at her when I say that because, somehow, somehow, I just know we could have done more.

It's not common sense and rational thinking that tells me this.It's the voice of children screaming, the sound of mothers weeping.

We could have called your buddy who's sector police, she says.She hears it too.

I knew that.I thought we could find it quicker.What was I thinking?

I misjudged . . . . and retrospect is a harsh judge.

Max brings out two glasses of plain old, cold milk.

It's like that old saying, Too little, too late.We were too little and too late.

Really.

I walked away, she says.She plops down on the side of my couch.She whispers, It put me at a tactical disadvantage.

She looks at the glass in her hand, as if she wants to smash it on the floor and says, I never let that matter before.

I whisper to Too Late, Max is right.I don't know what we could have done different.But we failed you.I'm sorry.


End file.
